


Five Times Nathan's Lamps Almost Got Broken (and One Time They Were Fixed)

by CookieDoughMe, paintedwolf



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-07
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-04-12 08:13:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19128076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieDoughMe/pseuds/CookieDoughMe, https://archiveofourown.org/users/paintedwolf/pseuds/paintedwolf
Summary: In the DVD Commentary for episode 4.01 - Fallout, Matt McGuinness mentions the popsicle-stick lamp in the Chief's office in the police station which “we’ve all imagined that Nathan built for his dad the Chief.”And this led to thoughts of Garland having all these lamps that he doesn't really need, because his kid made them for him. And then to thoughts about how the lamps have survived all this time and are still in the station even now that Dwight is Chief.And then we started writing fic and the initial 5 + 1 idea quickly expanded beyond itself. So, this fic will be part of a collection, and if anyone else out there feels inspired to add another moment in which disaster nearly befalls a popsicle-stick lamp that Nathan made for Garland as a kid, then we would love to read it!





	1. Police Chief's office, 1983

"God damn it!" Garland thumped the desk in frustration, jarring it enough to knock the wooden home made lamp off the edge. Lucy was close enough to react in time to catch it, saving it from splintering on the floor.

Garland ran his hands through his hair. "Thank you," he said, deliberately calmer as he took it from her. He couldn't help but catch the look in her eye; either wary of the anger on show in this man she had not known that long, or wondering what a popsicle lamp was doing in the station in the first place. "My kid made it," he told her, and saw her smile her understanding.

"Aw, cute," she replied.

Garland smiled, went for a joke to diffuse the remains of the anger, "First one was cute; we've a whole collection now. Another one just appeared in here last week while I was out, they're multiplying like Tribbles."

Lucy was having none of it though; she could see right through his bluster already. "Yeah, you love them," she told him. "You wouldn't keep it on your desk if you didn't like the reminder your son made something for you."

Yeah, she was right of course; he knew that. She could read people better than anyone he'd ever met. He smiled, put it back in its place. "He used enough glue it'd probably survive the fall anyway," he said, brushing a bit of dust off the top. "It'll outlive me I expect."


	2. The Out-of-Towner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A detective from Bangor gets a taste of small town weirdness when he visits Haven on a case

Every small town has secrets. Or at least, that’s what people say about small towns, anyway.

That there’s always some kind of scandal or thing that happened way-back-when that the locals like to keep quiet, that the old families still talk about over Sunday dinner. Truth was, you never really knew unless you lived in a small town with secrets. 

So when the black sedan pulled up outside the Haven PD one spring morning, it was a given that they knew he was coming, right from when he’d driven past Rosemary’s on his way in, and were ready for him when he entered the building. 

He introduced himself as Detective Sharpe, from Bangor, and he was there to speak to the Chief about a store robbery that they think was perpetrated by a guy who used to live in Haven.

“Chief’s down with the M.E. right now, but you’re welcome to wait in his office. Can I get you some coffee?”

“Black with sugar, if you don’t mind.”

 

He was sure the lady at the front desk was giving him the stink eye. He whistled idly, hands in his pockets as he took a lap around the Chief’s office, trying not to look like a kid waiting for the principal, when it caught his eye. It was some kind of popsicle-stick lamp sitting on a table under the window, though it looked more like a wonky sunflower, and he picked it up without thinking. He turned it over in his hands a few times, chuckling to himself, unable to decide if the thing was inspired or just plain ugly.

“You might wanna put that down, honey. Chief doesn’t like people touching his stuff.”

He jumped, almost dropping it, but through some miracle feat of juggling and dexterity, managed to save it at the last minute. He set it back on the table, this time definitely feeling like a kid who just got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The officer, on the other hand, was looking at him like he just insulted her mother. 

“Coffee,” she said, handing him a mug. “Chief’ll be up in a minute.”

 

His meeting with the Chief lasted all of five minutes, and he left with just a single photo-copied page in a file, and absolutely no information whatsoever about the perp. He hadn’t noticed it before, but as he walked out of Haven PD promising himself that Murphy was buying him donuts for a week for sending him out here, he spotted another one of those lamps perched on the front desk, and he wondered how he’d missed it.

He glanced back just before he rounded the corner, and she was watching him again from her desk with the popsicle-stick lamp in the corner. 

The feeling of eyes on him never left, right up until he passed the town sign. 

 

That night, he dreamed about being lost in a field of sunflower-shaped popsicle-stick lamps, and when Murphy asked him how his trip to Haven was, Sharpe just flipped him off.

“Small towns, man. You know what they’re like.”


	3. Haven PD break room, 1990s

"Oh hey, um …"

"Stan," the new recruit supplied helpfully.

"Right, Stan, sorry. How's your first week going?"

Haven PD's newest officer nodded his tall head. "Not too bad thanks, I think I'm settling in."

"Good stuff, well if you have any questions, you let me know. Sometimes the handbook doesn't answer everything after all. Took me about six months to work out this coffee machine, still have to battle with it on a regular basis."

"Actually, there is one thing I was wondering about," said Stan hesitantly. He wasn't sure whether to ask at all, but it was the kind of thing if he didn't do it now he never would. "I noticed a few of these popsicle stick lamps around the place; what's that all about?" Stan picked up the nearest example from the corner of the room and peered at it warily. It was probably about twice the size it really needed to be, and not quite as symmetrical as might have been intended.

"Ah, yes," his would-be mentor replied far more seriously than he'd expected him too. "The Chief's son made them when he was younger. He's in high school now but the Chief still keeps 'em around. No one who knows what's good for them wants to suggest otherwise, you know? I kinda like 'em myself, gives a cosy atmosphere to the place."

"Ah," said Stan. This made a bit more sense of things. "Thanks." He stepped back to the shelf in the corner to put it back where it belonged, which put him in front of the door just as someone else came in and they bumped into each other, the lamp in Stan's hands between them. He jumped back out of the way and looked down at it again, turning it this way and that to make sure it had survived. 

He blew out his cheeks; breaking it probably would not have been the best way to start his career at Haven PD but it looked undamaged. He put it carefully back on its shelf and reminded himself that the value of a thing was not always obvious at first glance.


	4. Blunt Force

Sometimes Duke questioned what he was doing with his life.

Particularly on days when a Trouble turned people feral, and even _more_ particularly on days when a Trouble turned people feral and they started attacking other people in enclosed spaces.

Currently, he was flat on his back in the Chief's office, pinned down by a snarling, drooling IT Technician who was inches away from...well he didn't know exactly _what_ , but he didn't exactly want him any closer to his face either way.

He grunted, pushing as hard as he could with his left hand, while his right searched the floor for some kind of weapon. His fingers brushed over something that was at least big enough and he swung, aiming for the guy's temple, though reminding himself not to hit _too_ hard. It wasn't the guy's fault, after all, even if he was currently trying to throttle the life out of him.

The blow was enough to stun him, and gave Duke an opening in which he managed to push up and grab him in a headlock.

Just as he bucked hard enough that Duke almost lost his grip, Nathan appeared at the door.

"Little help here, please?"

Nathan strode over quickly with a small syringe in his hand, and jabbed the guy in the shoulder. He went limp a moment later.

"Sedative, from Gloria. Should keep him out for an hour or two. I'll take him to a holding cell in a minute."

He gave Duke a hand up from the floor.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," said Duke.

Nathan patted him on the shoulder as he continued, "Audrey has a hit on who it could be. Should be over soon."

Duke was only half-listening. He stepped over and picked up the thing he'd hit IT guy over the head with. It was one of those popsicle-stick lamps, though he had no idea how it had even got there.

Even more weird: "I can't believe this thing is still in one piece."

Nathan took it from him. "Made 'em sturdy," he said, studying it with a bemused look on his face. "Guess they came in handy, after all."


	5. Haven High School, 1990s

It was time to go back inside for the afternoon’s classes, but Nathan and Duke still sat on the bench where they had eaten lunch, waiting for the other students to finish filing past before they got up.

“Hey Wuornos!” came a voice through the crowd, harsh and unexpected, “Hear you’re quite the artist!”

In another context it might have been a complement, but the tone suggested otherwise. Nathan however had no idea what his occasional bully was talking about and the frown on his face showed it. Next to him, Duke shrugged, and the bully and his friends kept walking as they laughed, leaving Nathan and Duke none the wiser.

Hannah Driscoll stepped out of the crowd to stop by their bench. “He means the competition,” she told them. “At the junior school,” Nathan and Duke looked at each other, still confused. Hannah sighed, “They’re having a popsicle lamp making competition in honor of the Chief’s collection. I heard they’re going to ask him to judge it.”

Nathan stared at her, grateful for the explanation, if not the nature of it. She shrugged, having nothing else to add, and joined the now-thinning crowd as the last of the students made it back inside the high school.

“Great,” said Nathan, voice flat.

“I could probably break into the station if you like,” Duke offered after a moment. “Some unfortunate accident might befall the lamps you made. Of course,” he added, thoughtful, “it would probably make sense if some accidents happened to some other stuff too; if it was just the lamps it would be too specific. But there’s probably some stuff in there worth stealing,” he finished optimistically.

“Be hard to break _into_ the police station?” Nathan asked.

Duke shrugged. “Yeah, maybe. Bet I could though. If you want?”

Nathan thought about this. He considered the idea of the town forgetting about the silly little lamps he had made as a kid, and he considered the idea of the Chief forgetting about them too. He thought about a lamp, on the Chief’s desk as he worked, and he thought about his dad turning up for work one morning to find it scattered in shards across the floor.

Nathan sighed. “Nah,” he said. “It’s not so bad. Thanks though.”

Duke clapped him on the shoulder. “Any time man,” he said. “Any time.”


	6. After the Troubles

Nathan had spent so long looking forward to the day the Troubles would finally end for good, that when it eventually happened he was entirely unprepared for the fact there were so very many things that still needed to be done. It seemed like in the months since the shroud came down and they regained contact with the outside world, he had been busier than ever.

But tonight he finally had a chance to tackle one of the jobs that had been calling to him for weeks. He pulled a dusty cardboard box out from under the dining table, where it had sat since Rebecca Rafferty handed it to him, its contents salvaged from the battered police station in the final days of the Troubles. He brushed off the layer of dust that had collected over the label _Nathan's lamps_ scratched on the top in biro.

It was strange he thought, as he started laying the pieces out on the table, that he didn't really remember making them at all. He had been young enough at the time that the details had faded as he had grown up. What he did remember was the way the Chief - his dad - had kept all of them around, even though no one office or police station could possibly need that many slightly-wonky popsicle-stick lamps. And what he remembered too, was the way the rest of Haven PD had happily embraced them as well, in all of their wonderfully unique individual wonkiness.

He wasn't even sure how many there had been in the end before he'd stopped making them. He knew some of them had been broken beyond all repair: smashed into smithereens by some Trouble or another, or when the station itself was damaged. But Rebecca had collected those that were not so badly broken. She had boxed them up and labelled them for him. And now he was going to fix them.

The first thing he had to do was work out which pieces belonged with which other pieces: it was a 3D jigsaw puzzle to start with. As he held pieces up to each other and formed related piles, he found that there were three broken lamps and luckily they were all pretty different from each other. Rebecca had been thorough in collecting everything as well because there didn't seem to be any pieces missing either. All he needed now was some glue, and fortunately he had thought of that and had plenty to hand.

Of course in actuality it didn't turn out to be quite that simple. Some of the pieces didn't line up quite as well as he'd thought, he had to find stuff for some of them to balance on while the glue set, he ended up with glue all over his hands (and somehow even in his hair) and the whole thing just generally took much longer than he had expected.

But. By the end of the evening, there they were: three different-but-complementary popsicle-stick lamps, damaged by the Troubles and battered by life in general, but still standing.

He would taken them into the station in the morning: one for the Chief's office, once for the break room where all the staff would see it on a daily basis and one for the front desk where visitors could get sight of it too.

In spite of (or perhaps even because of) all the trauma of the Troubles over the centuries and over recent years, Haven liked its traditions. In a sense, with the Troubles over and the 27 year cycle gone, Haven needed its traditions now more than ever. And after everything they had been through, Nathan had absolutely no intention of letting popsicle-stick lamps in the office of the Chief of Police be a tradition that came to an end on his watch.


End file.
